Marin Readers' Forum for March 27

The IJ's story on Larkspur's threat to withdraw from the Marin Telecommunications Agency needs clarification.

It is misinformation to say MTA has any jurisdiction over any cable operations in Marin.

The MTA, which is a joint powers sgency, was formed to negotiate and oversee the television franchise contract with Comcast. The MTA no longer has any jurisdiction over cable operations in Marin. This was surrendered in June 2011 to the state when lawmakers removed the right of cities to issue franchises to video providers.

In addition, the MTA has never had any jurisdiction over broadband Internet.

Today, the MTA only oversees our Community Media Center operator of our public access, or PEG, channels. This can effectively be managed by an oversight committee.

Franchise fees are generated from the billing of cable customers. MTA members are using franchise fees for their own general funds. These fees have more than doubled in the last 10 years, to $3.7 million in 2013. In addition, franchise fees have not been audited in years. Franchise fee management and distribution can be handled by the county treasurer's office in a timely manner. Why does the MTA need to have a staff with a quarter of million dollars overhead?

Marin residents face the prospect of the media center going dark due to lack of funding. Comcast would again take over and operate Marin's PEG channels as it did in the past.

The past decade we have seen consolidation of media companies with a few powerful conglomerates controlling access and content. Do we want Comcast to control Marin's access to our PEG channels and information?

Speak up at town council and supervisors' meetings or we will lose what's left of local TV control.

Bruce Baum, San Anselmo Media Action Marin

Chasing theories

In assessing intern Daniel Schwartz's March 24 Marin Voice column, "Climate change is a large threat," I would direct him to the appendix of Michael Crichton's "State of Fear." In that appendix, Crichton describes a crisis that drew support over 100 years ago from the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association and the National Research Council.

That crisis, eugenics, postulated a deterioration of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones — the foreigners, certain races, the unfit, degenerates and the "feeble minded."

Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality or just plain ignorant.

But, in hindsight, it is surprising that so few people objected.

Adolph Hitler would use eugenics as the basis for his final solution in the extermination of 6 million Jews.

I find it ironic that Schwartz calls for an emphasis on reducing foreign oil dependency as a means of cutting down the need for a military to protect the flow of that oil to the United States. I think if he looked at the North Dakota oil boom currently happening on private lands along with the potential gas and oil produced offshore (Cuba is currently partnering with China to develop that resource off its coast), coupled with the California gas potential via fracking, and finally the opening of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge and public lands for drilling he will find the answer to our foreign oil dependency right here in the U.S.

Finally, I find it highly ironic that the U.S. is getting set to reduce its troop levels to pre-1940 levels while an annexation of the Crimea has been performed by Russia. Doesn't this harken back 75 years to Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia?